 Part 1 Chapter 6B of THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMY DALE. For more information or to volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org. THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMY DALE by Frank L. Packard. Coming by Julia Albad. Part 1 THE MAN IN THE CASE. Chapter 6B DEVIL'S WORK CONTINUED. From the Blue Dragon to Chang Fu's was not far, and Jimmy Dale covered the distance in well under five minutes. Chang Fu's was just a tea merchant's shop, innocuous and innocent enough in its appearance, blatantly so indeed, and that was all outwardly. But Jimmy Dale, as he reached his destination, experienced the first sensation of uplift he had known that night, and this from what, apparently, did not in the least seem like a contributing cause. LUCK. The blessed luck of it, he muttered grimly, as he surveyed the sightseeing car drawn up at the curb and watched the passengers crowding out of it to the ground. It wouldn't have been as easy to fool all Chang as it was that fell all back at the dragon. And besides, if I can work it, there's a better chance this way of getting out alive. The guide was marshalling his gapers, some two dozen in all, men and women. Jimmy Dale unostationally fell in at the rear, and, the guide leading, the little crowd passed into the tea merchant's shop. Chang Fu, a vizend, wrinkled face, little celestial, oily suave, greeted them with profoused boughs, chattering the while volubly in Chinese. The guide made the introduction with an all-embracing sweep of his hand. Chang Fu, ladies and gentlemen, he announced, then held up his hand for silence. Ladies and gentlemen, he said impressively, this is one of the most notorious, if not THE most notorious, dive in Chinatown. And it is only through special arrangement with the authorities, and at great expense that the company is able exclusively to gain an entry here for its patrons. You will see here the real life of the Chinese, and in half an hour you will get what few would get in a lifetime spent in China itself. You will see the Chinese children dance and perform, the Chinese women at the household tasks, the jaws, the shrine of his hallowed ancestors, at which Chang Fu here worships, and you will enter the most famous opium den in the United States. Now, if you will all keep close together, we will make a start. In spite of his desperate situation, Jimmy Dale smiled a little whimsically. Yes, they would see it all, upstairs. The same old bunk dish out night after night at so much ahead, and the nervous little school ma'am of uncertain age, who fidgeted now beside him, would go back somewhere down in Maine, and Shriver Valshi related her wider experiences, and tremulous whispers into the shocked ears of envious other maiden ladies of equally uncertain age. The same old bunk, and a profitable one for Chang Fu for more reasons than one. It was dust in the eyes of the police. The police smiled knowingly at mention of Chang Fu. Who should know, if they didn't, that it was all harmless fake, all bunk? And so it was, upstairs. They were passing out of the shop now, bowed out through a side door by the up-sequious and oily Chang Fu, and now they masked again in a sort of little hallway, and Chang Fu, closing the door upon Jimmy Dale, who was the last in the line, shuffled back behind the counter in his shop, to resume his guard duty over customers of quite another ilk. With the door closed, it was dark, pitch-dark. And this, too, like everything else connected with Chang Fu's establishment, for more reasons than one, for effect, and for security. Nervous little twitters began to emanate from the women. The guides' voice rose reassuringly. Keep close together, ladies and gentlemen. We are going upstairs now, too. Jimmy Dale hugged back against the wall, sidled along it, and like a shadow slipped down to the end of the hall. The scuffling of two dozen pairs of feet mounting the creaky staircase drowned the slight sound as he cautiously opened the door. The darkness lay back, impenetrable, along the hall, and then, as cautiously as he had opened it, he closed the door behind him, and stood for an instant, listening at the head of a ladder-like stairway, his automatic in his hand now. It was familiar ground to Larry DeBatt. The steps led down to a cellar, and diagonally across from the foot of the steps was an opening, ingeniously hidden by a heterogeneous collection of odds and ends, boxes, cases, and rubbish from the pseudo tea-shop above, a low opening in the wall to a passage that led on through the cellars of perhaps half a dozen adjoining houses, each of which ladder was leased, in one name or another, by Chang Fu. Jimmy Dale crept down the steps, and in another moment had gained the father's side of the cellar. Then, skirting around the rock of cases, he stooped suddenly and passed in through the opening in the wall, and now he halted once more. He was straining his eyes down a long, narrow passage, whose blackness was accentuated rather than relieved by curious wavering, gossamer threats of yellow light that showed here and there from under makeshift thresholds, from doors slightly ajar. Faint noises came to him, a muffled, intermittent clink of coin, a low, continuous, droning hum of voices, the sickly sweet smell of opium pricked at his nostrils. Jimmy Dale's face said rigidly, It was the resort not only of the most depraved Chinese element, but of the worst white thugs that made New York their headquarters. Here, in the secession of cellars, roughly petitioned off to make a dozen rooms on either side of the passage, dope-fence sucked at the drug, and Chinese gamblers spent the greater part of their lives. Here, murder was hatched and played too often to its hellish end. Here, the scum of the underworld thought refuge from the police to the prophet of Chengfu, and here, somewhere, in one of these rooms, was the vowser. The vowser, Jimmy Dale stole forward silently, without a sound, swiftly, pausing only to listen for a second space at the doors as he passed. From this one came that clink of coin, from another that jabber of Chinese, from still another that overpowering stench of opium, and once, iron-nerved as he was, a cold thrill passed over him. Let this lair of hell's wolves, so intent now on their own affairs, be once aroused, as they certainly must be roused before he could hope to finish the vowser, and his chance of escape were... He straightened suddenly, alert, tense, strained. Voices, raised in a furious quarrel, came from a door just behind him on the other side of the passage, where a film of light streamed out through a cracked panel. It was the vowser and Dago Jim, and drunk, both of them, and both in a blind fury. It happened quick then, almost instantaneously it seemed to Jimmy Dale. He was crouched now close against the door, his eye to the crack in the panel. There was only one figure inside, Dago Jim, standing beside a table on which burned a lamp. The tabletop littered with watches, purses, and small, chattelain bags. The man was lurching unsteadily on his feet, a vicious sneer of triumph on his face, waving tauntly an open letter in Jimmy Dale's pocketbook in his hands, waving them presumably in the face of the vowser, whom, from the restrictions of the crack, Jimmy Dale could not see. He was conscious of a sickening sense of disaster. His hope against hope had been in vain. The letter had been opened and read. The identity of the gray seal was solved. Dago Jim's voice roared out, hoarse, blasphemous, and drunken rage. The gray seal, see? You spit your life, I knows. I've been waiting for something like this, damn yous. You's been stalling on me for a year every time it came to a divvy. You've got a pocketful now you snitch tonight that yous are trying to do me out of. Well, keep him, he shoved his face forward. I keep this, see? Keep him, vowser, you cross-eyed. Everything I pinched tonight's on the table there with what yous pinched yourself, cutting the vowser in a sullen, threatening growl. Yous lie and yous know it, retorted Dago Jim. Yous have given me the short end every time we've pulled a deal. That letter's mine, yous, bowled the vowser furiously. Why didn't yous open it and read it, then, instead of letting me do it to keep me busy while yous shortchanged me, sneer Dago Jim. Yous thought it was some sweet billy do, eh? Well, thanks, vowsers. That's what it is, say? He mocked. There's a guile cash, a thousand-century notes for this, and, if you don't say, there's some reward out for the gray seal, when yous like to know who it is. Well, when I'm ridden in my private buzz-wagon, vowser, you'll stick around and maybe I'll tell yous, and maybe I won't. By God, the vowsers' voice rose in a scream, yous hand over that letter! Yous go to Red, Lurid Red, a stream of flames seemed to cut across Jimmy Dale's line of vision, came the roar of a revolver shot, and, like a madman, Jimmy Dale flung his body at the door. Only at best it crashed inward, half wrenched from its hinges, precipitating him inside. He recovered himself and leaped forward. The room was swirling with blue eddies of smoke. Dago Jim, hands flung up, still grasping the letter and pocketbook, pawed at the air, and plunged with a sagging lurch face downward to the floor. There was a yell and an oath from the vowser, the crack of another revolver shot, the hum of the bullet past Jimmy Dale's ear, the scourge of the tongue flame in his face, and he was upon the other. Screeching profanity the vowser grabbed, and, for an instant, the two men rocked, reeled and swayed in each other's embrace. Then, both men losing their balance, they shot suddenly backward. The vowser, undermost, striking his head against the table's edge, and men, table and lamp, crashed downward in a heap to the floor. It had been no more, at most, than a matter of seconds since Jimmy Dale had hurled himself into the room. And now, with a gurgling sigh, the vowser's arm, that had been wound around Jimmy Dale's back and shoulders, relaxed, and from the blow on his head, the man lay back, inert and stunned. And then it seemed to Jimmy Dale, as though pandemonium and reality, in chaos at the touch of some devil's hand, reigned around him. It was dark. No. Not dark. A spurt of flame was leaping along the line of trickling oil from the broken lamp on the floor. It threw into ghastly relief the sprawled form of Dago Jim. Outside, from along the passageway, came a confused jangle of commotion, whispering voices, shuffling feet, the swifts of Chinese garments. And the room itself began to spring into weird, flickering shadows, that mounted and crept up the walls with the spreading fire. There was not a second to lose before the room would be swarming with that rush from the passageway. And there was still the letter, the pocket-book. The table had fallen half over Dago Jim. Jimmy Dale pushed it aside, tore the crushed letter and the pocket-book from the man's hand, and felt, with a grim, horrible sort of anxiety, for the other's heartbeat, for the verdict that meant life or death to himself. There was no sign of life. The man was dead. Jimmy Dale was on his feet now. A face, another, and another showed in the doorway. The vowser was regaining his senses, stumbling to his knees. There was one chance, just one, to take those crowding figures by surprise. And with a yellow fire, Jimmy Dale sprang for the doorway. They gave way before his rush, tumbling back in their surprise against the opposite wall, and, turning, Jimmy Dale raised down the passageway. Doors were opening everywhere now, forms were pushing out into the semi-darkness, only to duck hastily back again as Jimmy Dale's automatic barked and spat a running fire of warning ahead of him, and then behind the vowser's voice freaked out. So, Kim, kill the guy, he's croaked Dago Jim, put a hole in him, the yells, a chorus of them, took up the refrain, then the rush of following feet, and the passageway seemed to racket as though a gantling gun were in play with the fuselad of revolver shots. But Jimmy Dale was at the opening now. Ingent, like a bass runner plunging for the bag, he flung himself in a low dive-through and into the open cellar beyond. He was on his feet, over the boxes, and dashing up the stairs in a second. The door above opened as he reached the top. Jimmy Dale's right hand shot out with a clubner-wolver, and with a grunt, Chang Fu went down before the blow and the headlong rush. The next instant, Jimmy Dale had sprung through the tea-shop and was out on the street. A minute, two minutes more, and Chinatown would be in an uproar. Chang Fu would see to that, and the vowser would prod him on. The danger was far from over yet. And then, as he ran, Jimmy Dale gave a little gasp of relief, just ahead, drawn up at the curb, stood a taxi-cap, waiting. Before a private slumming-party, Jimmy Dale put on a spurt, reached it, and wrenched the door open. Quick! he flung at the startle-schauffeur, then near a subway-station. There's a ten-spot in it for you. Quick, man! Quick! Here they come! A crowd of Chinese, pouring like angry hornets from Chang Fu's shop, came yelling down the street. And the taxi took the corner on two wheels. And Jimmy Dale, panting, choking for his breath like a man spent, sank back against the cushions. But five minutes later it was quite another Jimmy Dale, composed, nonchalant, impertable, who entered an uptown subway-train, and, choosing a seat alone near the center of the car, which at that hour of night in the downtown district was almost deserted, took to crush letter from his pocket. For a moment he made no attempt to read it. His dark eyes, now that he was free from observation, full of trouble retrospect, fixed on the window at his side. It was not a pleasant thought that it had cost a man his life, nor yet that that life was also the price of his own freedom. True, if there were two men in the city of New York, whose crimes married at neither sympathy nor mercy, those two men were the vowser and Dago Jim. But yet, after all, it was a human life, and, even if his own had been in the balance, thank God it had been through no act of his that Dago Jim had gone out. The vowser, cute and cunning, had been quick enough to say, so to clear himself. Jimi Dale smiled a little now. Neither the vowser, nor Cheng Fu, nor Chinatown would ever be in a position to recognize their uninvited guest. Jimi Dale's eyes shifted to the letter speculatively, gravely. It seemed as though the night had already held a year of happenings, and the night was not over yet. There was the letter. It had already cost one life. Was it to cost another, or what? It began as it always did. He read it through once in amazement, a second time with a flush of bitter anger creeping to his cheeks, and a third time, curiously memorizing as it were, snatches of it here and there. Dear Philanthropic Crook, Robbery of Hudson Mercantile National Bank, The employee is ex-convict, bad police record, served term in Singsing three years ago. Known to police as Bookkeeper Bob, real name is Robert Moyne, lives at Street Harlem. Inspector Burton and Lannigan, of headquarters trailing him now, Robbery not yet made public. There was a great deal more, four sheets of closely written data, with an exclamation almost out of dismay, Jimmy Dale pulled out his watch. So that was what Burton and Lannigan were up to. And he had actually ran into them, Lord, the irony of it, the. And then Jimmy Dale stared at the dial of his watch incredulously. It was still but barely midnight. It seemed impossible that since leaving the theater at a few minutes before eleven, he had lived through but a single hour. Jimmy Dale's fingers began to pluck up the letter, tearing it into pieces, tearing the pieces over and over again into tiny shreds. The train stopped at station after station. People got on and off, Jimmy Dale's hat was over his eyes, and his eyes were glued again to the window. Did Bookkeeper Bob return to his flat in Harlem with the detectives at his heels? Or were Burton and Lannigan still trailing the man downtown, somewhere around the cafes? If the former, the theft of the letter and its incident loss of time, had been an irreparable disaster. If the latter, well, who knew? The risk was the gray seals. At one hundred and twenty-fifth Street Jimmy Dale left the train, and, at the end of a sharp four minutes' walk, during which he had dodged in and out from street to street, stopped on a corner to survey the block ahead of him. It was a block devoted exclusively to flats and apartment houses, and, apart from a few belated pedestrians, was deserted. Jimmy Dale strolled leisurely down one side, crossed the street at the end of the block, and strolled leisurely back on the other side. There was no sign of either Burton or Lannigan. It was a fairly safe presumption, then, that Bookkeeper Bob had not returned yet, or one of the detectives, at least, would have been shadowing the house. Jimmy Dale, smiling a little grimly, retraced his steps again, and turned deliberately into a doorway, whose number he had noted as he had passed a moment or so before. So, after all, there was time yet. This was the house. Number 18. She had said in her letter. A flat, three stories, moinly on ground floor. Jimmy Dale leaned against the vestibule door. There was a faint click. A little steel instrument was withdrawn from the lock, and Jimmy Dale stepped into the hall, where a gas jet turned down, burned dimly. The door of the ground floor apartment was at his right. Jimmy Dale reached up and turned off the light. Again those slim tapering, wonderfully sensitive fingers, worked with the little steel instrument, this time in the lock of the apartment door. Again there was that almost inaudible click, and then cautiously, inch by inch, the door opened under his hand. He peered inside, down a hallway lighted, if it could be called lighted at all, by a subdued glow from two open doors that gave upon it. He heard intently, listening intently, as he drew a black silk mask from his pocket, and slipped it over his face. And then, silent as a shadow in his movements, the door left just a jar behind him. He stole down the carpeted hallway. Opposite the first of the open doorways, Jimmy Dale paused, a curiously hard expression creeping over his face. His lips beginning to droop ominously downward at the corners. It was a little sitting room, cheaply but tastefully furnished, and a young woman, bookkeeper's Bob's wife evidently, and evidently sitting up for her husband, had fallen sound asleep in a chair, her head pillowed on her arms that were outstretched across the table. For a moment Jimmy Dale held there, his eyes on the scene. And the next moment his hand curved into a clenched fist. He had passed on and entered the adjoining room. It was a child's bedroom. A nightlamp burned on a table beside the bed, and the soft rays seemed to play and linger in caresses on the tousaled golden hair of a little girl of perhaps two years of age. And something seemed to choke suddenly in Jimmy Dale's throat. The sweet, innocent little face, upturned to his, was smiling at him as she slept. Jimmy Dale turned away, his head, his eyelashes wet under his mask. Beneath the mattress of the child's bed the letter had said. His face like stone, his lips a thin line now, Jimmy Dale's hand reached deftly in without disturbing the child and took out a package, and then another. He straightened up, a bundle of crisp new hundred dollar notes in each hand, and on the top of one slipped under the elastic band that held the bills together, an unsealed envelope. He drew out the ladder and opened it. It was a second-class steamship passage to Vera Cruz, made out in a fictitious name, of course, to John Davies. The booking for next day's sailing. From the ticket, from the stolen money, Jimmy Dale's eyes lifted to rest again on the little golden head, the smiling lips, and then, dropping the packages into his pockets, his own lips moved queerly. He turned abruptly to the door. My God, the shame of it, he whispered to himself. He crept down the corridor, past the open door of the room where the young woman still sat fast asleep, and, his mask in his pocket again, stepped softly into the vestibule, and from there to the street. Jimmy Dale hurried now, spurred on it seemed by a hot, insensate furry that raged within him. There was still one other call to make that night, still those remaining and minute details in the latter part of her letter. Grim and ugly in their portent. PART 1 CHAPTER 6 C of THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMY DALE CHAPTER 6 C DEVIL'S WORK CONCLUDED It was close upon one o'clock in the morning when Jimmy Dale stopped again. This time before a fashionable dwelling just off Central Park. And here, for perhaps the space of a minute, he surveyed the house from the sidewalk, watching, with a sort of speculative satisfaction, a man's shadow that passed constantly to and fro across the drawn blinds of one of the lower windows. The rest of the house was in darkness. Yes, said Jimmy Dale, nodding his head, I rather thought so. The servants will have retired hours ago. It's safe enough. He rang quickly up the steps and rang the bell. A door opened almost instantly, sending a faint glow into the hall from the lighted room. A hurried step crossed the hall, and the outer door was thrown back. Well, what is it? demanded a voice brusquely. It was quite dark, too dark for either to distinguish the other's features, and Jimmy Dale's hat was drawn far down over his eyes. I want to see Mr. Thomas H. Carling, cashier of the Hudson Mercantile National Bank. It's very important, said Jimmy Dale earnestly. I am Mr. Carling, replied the other. What is it? Jimmy Dale leaned forward. From headquarters, with a report, he said, in a low tone. Ah! exclaimed the bank official sharply. Well, it's about time. I've been waiting up for it. Though I expected you would telephone rather than this. Come in. Thank you, said Jimmy Dale courteously, and stepped into the hall. The other closed the front door. The servants are in bed, of course, he explained, as he led the way toward the lighted room. This way, please. Behind the other, across the hall, Jimmy Dale followed, and close at Carling's heels, entered the room, which was fitted up, quite evidently regardless of cost, as a combination library and study. Carling, in a somewhat pompous fashion, walked straight ahead toward the carved mahogany flat-top desk, and, as he reached it, waved his hand. Take a chair, he said, over his shoulder, and then, turning in the act of dropping into his own chair, grasped suddenly at the edge of the desk instead, and, with a low, startled cry, stared across the room. Jimmy Dale was leaning back against the door that was closed now behind him, and on Jimmy Dale's face was a black silk mask. For an instant neither men spoke nor moved. Then Carling, spare-built, dapper in evening clothes, edged back from the desk, and laughed a little, uncertainly. Quite neat! I compliment you. From headquarters with a report, I think you said. Which I neglected to add, said Jimmy Dale, was to be made in private. Carling, as though to put as much distance between them as possible, continued to edge back across the room. But his small black eyes, black now to the pupils themselves, never left Jimmy Dale's face. In private, eh, he seemed to be sparing for time, as he smiled. In private, you've a strange method of securing privacy, haven't you? A bit melodramatic, isn't it? Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me who you are. Jimmy Dale smiled indulgently. My mask is only for effect, he said. My name is Smith. Yes, said Carling. I'm very stupid. Thank you. I— He had reached the other side of the room now, and with a quick, sudden movement, jerked his hand to the dial of the safe that stood against the wall. But Jimmy Dale was quicker. Without shifting his position, his automatic, whipped from his pocket, held at this concerting bead on Carling's forehead. Please don't do that, said Jimmy Dale softly. It's rather a good make, that's safe. I daresay it would take me half an hour to open it. I was rather curious to know whether it was locked or not. Carling's hand dropped to his side. So, he sneered, that's it, is it? The ordinary variety of sneak-sleaf? His voice was rising gradually. Well, sir, let me tell you that. Mr. Carling, said Jimmy Dale, in a low, even tone, unless you moderate your voice, someone in the house might hear you. I'm quite well aware of that. But if that happens, if anyone enters this room, if you make a move to touch a button, or in any other way attempt to attract attention, I'll drop you where you stand. His hand, behind his back, extracted the key from the door-lock, held it up for the other to see, then dropped it into his pocket, and his voice, cold before, rang param torrently now, come back to the desk and sit down in that chair, he ordered. For a moment Carling hesitated, then, with a half-moddered oath, obeyed. Jimmy Dale moved over, and stood in front of Carling on the other side of the desk, and stared silently at the immaculate, fashionably groomed figure before him. Under the prolonged gaze, Carling's composure, in a measure, at least, seemed to forsake him. He began to drum nervously with his fingers on the desk, and shift uneasily in his chair. And then, from first one pocket, and then the other, Jimmy Dale took the two packages of banknotes, and, still without a word, pushed them across the desk until they lay under the other's eyes. Carling's fingers stopped their drumming, slid to the desk edge, tightened there, and a whiteness crept into his face. Then, with an effort, he jerked himself, erect in his chair. What's this? he demanded hoarsely. About ten thousand dollars, I should say, said Jimmy Dale slowly. I haven't counted it. Your bank was robbed this evening at closing time, I understand. Yes! Carling's voice was excited now, the color back in his face. But you? How? Do you mean that you are returning the money to the bank? Exactly, said Jimmy Dale. Carling was once more the pompous bank official. He leaned back and surveyed Jimmy Dale critically with his little black eyes. Ah! Quite so, he observed. That accounts for the mask. But I am still a little in the dark. Under the circumstances, it is quite impossible that you should have stolen the money yourself, and— I didn't, said Jimmy Dale. I found it hidden in the home of one of your employees. You found it where? In Moyne's home, up in Harlem. Moyne, eh? Carling was alert. Quick now, jerking out his words. How did you come to get into this, then? His pal? Double-crossing him, eh? I suppose you want a reward. Well, attend to that, of course. You're wiser than you know, my man. That's what we suspected. We've had the detectives trailing Moyne all evening. Reach forward over the desk for the telephone. I'll telephone headquarters to make the arrest at once. Just a minute, in the post, Jimmy Dale gravely, I want you to listen to a little story first. A story? What has a story got to do with this? snapped Carling. The man has got a home, said Jimmy Dale softly, a home and a wife, and a little baby girl. Oh, that's the game, then, eh? You want to plead for him? Carling flung out gruffly. Well, he should have thought of all that before. It's quite useless for you to bring it up. The man has had his chance already. A better chance than any one with his record ever had before. We took him into the bank knowing that he was an ex-convict, but believing that we could make an honest man of him. And this is the result. And yet, no, said Carling icely. You refuse? Absolutely. Jimmy Dale's voice had a lingering, wistful note in it. I refuse, said Carling bluntly. I won't have anything to do with it. There was just an instant silence, and then, with a strange, slow-creeping motion, as a panther creeps when about to spring, Jimmy Dale projected his body across the desk, far across it toward the other, and the muscles of his jaw were quivering, his words rasping. Choked was the sweep of furry dad, held back so long, broke now in a passionate search. And shall I tell you why you won't? Your bank was robbed to night of one hundred thousand dollars. There are ten thousand here. The other ninety thousand are in your safe. You lie, ashen to the lips. Carling had risen in his chair. You lie, he cried. Do you hear? You lie. I tell you. You lie. Jimmy Dale's lips parted ominously. Sit down, he gritted between his teeth. The white in Carling's face had turned to gray. His lips were working. Mechanically he sank down again in his chair. Jimmy Dale still leaned over the desk, resting his weight on his right elbow, the automatic in his right hand covering Carling. You curve, Vispit Jimmy Dale. There's just one reason, only one, that keeps me from putting a bullet through you while you sit there. We'll get to that in a moment. There is a little story first. Carl, I tell it to you now. For the past four years, and God knows how many before that, you've gone the pace. The lavishness of the spatula establishment of yours is common talk in New York, far in excess of a bank cashier's salary, but you were supposed to be a wealthy man in your own right, and so in reality you were once. But you went through your fortune two years ago, counted a model citizen, an upright man, an honor to the community. What were you, Carling? What are you? Shall I tell you? Rowe, gambler, leading a double life of the fastest kind. You did it cleverly, Carling. Hit it well. But your game is up. Tonight, for instant, you are at the end of your teeter, swamped with debts, exposure threatening you at any moment. Why don't you tell me again that I lie, Carling? But now the man made no answer. He apt sunk a little deeper in his chair, a dawning look of terror in the eyes that held, fascinated, on Jimmy Dale. You curr, said Jimmy Dale again. You curr with your devil's work. A year ago you saw this night coming, when you must have money or face ruin and exposure. You saw then, a year ago, the day that moin, concealing nothing of his present record, applied through friends for a position in the bank. Your co-officials were opposed to his appointment. But you, do you remember how you pleaded to give the man his chance, and in your hellish ingenuity saw your way, then out of the trap? An ex-convict from Singsing? It was enough, wasn't it? What chance had he? Jimmy Dale paused, his left hand clenched, until the skin formed whitish knobs over the knuckles. Carlin's tongue saw his lips, made a circuit of them, and he tried to speak, but his voice was an incoherent muttering. I'll not waste words, said Jimmy Dale, in his grim monotone. I am not sure enough myself that I could keep my hands off you much longer. The actual details of how you stole the money to-day do not matter, now. A little later, perhaps in court, but not now. You were the last to leave the bank, but before leaving you pretended to discover the theft of a hundred thousand dollars, that, done up in a paper parcel, was even then reposing in your desk. You brought the parcel home, put it in that safe there, and notifying the president of the bank by telephone from here of the robbery, suggesting that police headquarters be advised at once. He told you to go ahead and act as you saw best. You notified the police, speciously directing suspicious to the ex-convict and the bank's employee. You knew Moyne was dining out to-night, you knew where, and at a hint from you the police took up the trail. A little later in the evening you took these two packages of banknotes from the rest, and with this steamship ticket, which you obtained yesterday, while out at lunch, by sending a district messenger boy, with the money and instructions in a sealed envelope to purchase for you, you went up to the Moyne's flat, in Harlem, for the purpose of secreting them somewhere there. You pretended to be much disappointed at finding Moyne out. You had just come for a little social visit to get better acquainted with the home life of your employees. Mrs. Moyne was genuinely pleased and grateful. She took you in to see the little girl, who was already asleep in bed. She left you there for a moment to enter the door, and you, you, Jimmy Dale's voice choked again, you plot on God's earth, you slip the money and ticket under the child's mattress. Carling came forward with a lurch in his chair, and his hands went out, pawing in a wild pleading fashion over Jimmy Dale's arm. Jimmy Dale flung him away. You were safe enough, he rasped on. The police could only construe your visit to Moyne's flat as seal on behalf of the bank. And it was safer. Much more circumspect on your part, not to order the flat searched at once, but only as a last resort, as it were, after you had let the police to trail him all evening and still remain without a clue. And besides, of course, not until you had planted the evidence that was to damn him and wreck his life and home. You were even generous in the amount you deprived yourself of out of the hundred thousand dollars, for less would have been enough. Caught with ten thousand dollars of the bank's money and a steamship ticket made out in a fictitious name, it was prima facie evidence that he had done the job and had the balance somewhere. What would his denials, his protestations of innocent count for? He was an ex-convict, a hardened criminal, caught red-handed with a portion of the proceeds of robbery. He had succeeded in hiding the remainder of it too cleverly. That was all. Carling's face was ghastly. His hands went out again. Then his tongue moistened his dry lips. He whispered, Isn't—isn't there some—some way we can fix this? And then Jimmy Dale laughed, not pleasantly. Yes, there's a way, Carling, he said grimly, that's why I'm here. He picked up a sheet of writing paper and pushed it across the desk, then a pen, which he dipped into the ink-stand and extended to the other. The way you'll fix it will be to write out a confession exonerating moin. Carling shrank back into his chair, his head huddling into his shoulders. No, he cried, I won't! I can't! My God! I—I won't!" The automatic in Jimmy Dale's hand edged forward the fraction of an inch. I have not used this, yet. You understand now why, don't you, he said under his breath. No, no. Carling pushed away the pen. I'm ruined, ruined as it is. But this would mean the penitentiary, too. Where you try to send an innocent man in your place, you hound, where you— Some other way, some other way, Carling was babbling, let me out of this, for God's sake, let me out of this. Carling, said Jimmy Dale hoarsely, I stood beside a little bed to-night, and looked at a baby girl, a little baby girl with golden hair, who smiled as she slept. Carling shivered and passed a shaken hand across his face. Take this pen, said Jimmy Dale monotonously, or this. The automatic lifted until the muscle was on a line with Carling's eyes. Carling's hand reached out, still shaken, and took the pen, and his body, dragged limply forward, hung over the desk. The pen splattered on the paper. A bead of sweat, spurting from the man's forehead, dropped through the sheet. There was silence in the room. A minute passed, another. Carling's pen traveled haltingly across the paper, then, with a queer low cry as he signed his name. He dropped the pen from his fingers, and, rising unsteadily from his chair, stumbled away from the desk towards the couch across the room. An instant Jimmy Dale watched the other. Then he picked up the sheet of paper. It was a miserable document, miserably scrawled. I guess it's all up. I guess I knew it would be some day. Moyn hadn't anything to do with it. I stole the money myself from the bank to-night. I guess it's all up. Thomas H. Carling. From the paper Jimmy Dale's eyes shifted to the figure by the couch, and the paper fluttered suddenly from his fingers to the desk. Carling was reeling, clutching at his throat. A small glass vial rolled upon the carpet, and then, even as Jimmy Dale sprang forward, the other pitched headlong over the couch, and in a moment it was over. Presently Jimmy Dale picked up the vial, and dropped it back on the floor again. There was no label on it, but it needed none. The strong, penetrating odor of bitter almonds was telltale evidence enough. It was prusik, or hydrocyanic acid, probably the must deadly poison, and the swifted in its action that was known to science. Carling had provided against that some day in his confession. For a little space, motionless, Jimmy Dale stood looking down at the silent, outstretched form. Then he walked slowly back to the desk, and slowly deliberately picked up the signed confession, and the steamship ticket. He held them in instant, staring at them. Then methodically began to tear them into little pieces. A strange, tired smile hovering on his lips. The man was dead now. There would be disgrace enough for some one to bear, a mother perhaps, who knew, and there was another way now, since the man was dead. Jimmy Dale put the pieces in his pocket, went to the safe, opened it, and took out a parcel, locked the safe carefully, and carried a parcel to the desk. He opened it there. Inside were nearly two dozen little packages of hundred dollar bills. The other two packages that he had brought with him, he added to the rest. From his pocket he took out the thin metal insignia case, and with the tiny tweezers lifted up one of the gray-colored, diamond-shaped paper seals. He moistened the adhesive side, and, still holding it by the tweezers, dropped it on his handkerchief, and pressed the seal down on the face of the topmost package of banknotes. He tied the parcel up then, and, picking up the pen, addressed it in printed characters. Hotson and Mercantile National Bank, New York City. District messenger, some way, in the morning, he murmured. Jimmy Dale slipped his mask into his pocket, and, with the parcel under his arm, stepped to the door and unlocked it. He paused for an instant on the threshold for a single, quick, comprehensive glance around the room, and then passed on out into the street. At the corner he stopped to light a cigarette, and the flame of the match spurting up disclosed a face that was worn and haggard. He threw the match away, smiled a little rarely, and went on. The gray seal had committed another crime. CHAPTER 6 C PART 1 CHAPTER 7-A OF THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMY DALE FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO VOLUNTEER, PLEASE VISIT LibriVox.org THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMY DALE BY FRANK L. PACKARD READING BY LOSCH ROLANDER PART 1 THE MAN IN THE CASE CHAPTER 7-A THE THIEF CHOSING BETWEEN THE SNOW IN APRIL, THE SPARKLING GLASS AND SILVER, THE COSY SHADLE TABLE LAMPS, THE FAMOUS FRIENDSHIFT OF THE ULTRA EXCLUSIVE ST. JAMES CLUB, HIS OWN HOME ON RIVERSIDE DRIVE, WHERE A DINNER FIT FOR AN EPICERY AND SERVED BY JAYSON, THAT MOST PERFECT OF BUTTLERS AWATED HIM. AND MARILYANCE, JIMMY DALE, DRIVING IN ALONE IN HIS TOURING CAR FROM AN AFTERNOON SCOLF, HAD CHOSEN MARILYANCE. MARILYANCE, IF SUCH A THING AS SPOHEMIANISM OR RATHER CONCRETE EXPRESSION OF IT EXISTS, WAS SPOHEMIAN. A TWO-PIST RING ORCHESTRA PLAYED VALENTLY TO THE ACCOMPANYMENT OF A HORSE THROATED PIANO AND BETWEEN CORSES, THE DINERS TOOK UP THE REFRAIN. AND, AS IT WAS ALWAYS BETWEEN CORSES WITH SOMEONE, THE PLACE WAS A BEDLAM OF NOISY RIOT. NEVER THE LESS, IT WAS MARILYANCE, AND JIMMY DALE LIKED MARILYANCE. HE HAD DINED THERE MANY TIMES BEFORE, AS HE HAD JUST DINED IN THE PERSON OF JIMMY DALE, THE MILLIONAIR, HIS HIGH PRIZED IMPORTED CAR WITH THE CURVE OF THE SHABBY STREET OUTSIDE, AND HE HAD DINED THERE DISREPUTABLE IN A TIRE, SEEDY IN APPEARANCE, WITH THE POLICE JELPING AT HIS HEALS, AS LARRY THE BAT. IN EITHER CHARACTER, MARILYANCE HAD WELCOMEED HIM WITH EQUAL COGESY TO IT'S SPOTTED LINEN, AND MOST EXCELLENT TABLEDOT, WITH VAN ORTINÈRE FOR FIFTY SENSE. AND NOW IN THE ACTO BREACHING INTO HIS POCKET FOR THE CHANGE TO PAY HIS BILL, JIMMY DALE SEEMS SUDDENLY TO EXPERIENCE SOME DIFFICULTY IN FINDING WHAT HE SORT, AND HIS FINGERS WENT FUMBLING FROM ONE POCKET TO ANOTHER. TWO MEN AT THE TABLE IN FRONT OF HIM WERE TALKING. THEIR VOICES OVER A MOMENTARY LUL IN VIOLIN SQUEEKS, TALK, LAUGH TO SINGING, AND THE CLATTER OF DISHES REACHED HIM. CARLING! COMMIT SUICIDE! NOT ON YOUR LIFE! NO! OF COURSE IT DIDN'T! IT WAS THAT CURRIEST GRAY SEAL CROAKED HIM, JUST AS SURE AS YOU SIT IN THAT CHAIR. THE OTHER GRANTED. YES, BUT WHAT THE GRAY SEAL WANT TO PINCH A HUNDRED THOUSAND OUT OF THE BANK FOR, AND THEN GIVE IT BACK AGAIN THE NEXT MORNING? WHAT'S HE DONE A HUNDRED OTHER THINGS FOR TO COVER UP THE REAL OBJECT OF WHAT HE'S AFTER? RETORTED THE FIRST SPEAKER, WITH A SHORT WISHER SLAF, THEN WITH THE THUMP OF HIS FIST ON THE TABLE, THE MAN'S A DEVIL, A Fiend, AND ANYWHERE ELSE, BUT NEW YORK HE'D HAVE BEEN CAUGHT AND SENT TO THE CHAIR WHERE HE BELONGS LONG AGO AND A BURST OF RAGTIME DROWN OUT THE MAN'S WORDS. Jimmy Dale placed a fifty-cent piece and a tip beside it on his dinner-check, pushed back his chair, and rose from the table. There was a half-tolerantly satirical, half-angry glint in his dark, steady eyes. It was not only the police who gelped at his heels, but every man, woman, and child in the city. The man had not voiced his own sentiments. He had voiced sentiments of New York. And it was quite on the cards that if he, Jimmy Dale, were ever caught, his destination would not even be the death-hell and the chair at Sing Sing. His fellow citizens had reached a pitch where they would be quite capable of literally tearing him to pieces if they ever got their hands on him. And yet there were a few, a very few, a handful out of five millions who sometimes remembered perhaps to thank God that the grey seal lived. That was his reward. That, and she, whose mysterious letters prompted and impelled his, the grey seals' acts. She, nameless, fascinating in her brilliant resourcefulness, sitting in her power, a woman whose life was bound up with his and yet held apart from him in the most inexplicable, absorbing way, a woman he had never seen save for her gloved arm in the limousine that night, who at one unexpected moment projected a dazzling impersonal existence across his path, and the next, leaving him battling for his life, where greed and passion and crime swirled about him, was gone. The medaled threaded the small, crowded rooms. The interior of Marlians had never been altered from the days when the place had been a family residence of some pretension, and reaching the hall received his hat from the frowsy-looking boy in attendance. He passed outside, and at the top of the steps, paused as he took his cigarette case from his pocket. It was nearly a week since Carling, the cashier of the Hudson Mercantile National Bank, had been found dead in his home, a bottle that had contained hydrosionic acid on the floor beside him. Nearly a week since bookkeeper Bob, unaware that he had ever been under temporary suspicion for the robbery of the bank, had equally unknown to himself been cleared of any complicity in that affair, and yet, as witnessed the conversation of a moment ago, it was still the topic of New York, still the vital issue that filled the moor of newspapers with ravings, threats, and excreations against the grey seal, snarling virulently the vile at the police for the latter's ineptitude, inefficiency, and impotence. The demedale closed his cigarette case with a snap that was almost human in his irony, dropped it back into his pocket, and lighted a match, but the flame was arrested halfway to the tip of his cigarette, as his eyes fixed suddenly and curiously on a woman's form, hurrying down the street. She had turned the corner before he took his eyes from her, and the match between his fingers had gone out. Not that there was anything very strange in a woman walking, or even half running, along the street, nor that there was anything particularly attractive or unusual about her, and if there had been the street was too dark for him to have distinguished it. It was not that. It was the fact that she had neither passed by the house on whose steps he stood, nor come out of any of the adjoining houses. It was as though she had suddenly and miraculously appeared out of thin air, and taken form on a sidewalk a little way down from Marlians. "'That's queer,' commented Jimmy Dale to himself. However, he took out another match, lighted his cigarette, jerked the matchstub away from him, and with a lift of his shoulders went down the steps. He crossed the pavement, walked around the front of his machine, since the steering wheel was on the side next to the curb, and with his hand out to open the door stopped. Someone had been tampering with it. It was not quite closed. There was no mistake. Jimmy Dale made no mistakes of that kind. A man whose life hung a dozen times a day on little things could not afford to make them. He had closed it firmly, even with a bang when he had got out. Instantly, suspicious, he wrenched the door wide open, switched on the light under the hood, and with a sharp exclamation bent quickly forward, a glove, a woman's glove, a white glove lay on the floor of the car. Jimmy Dale's pulse leaped suddenly into fierce pounding beats. It was hers. He knew that intuitively. Knew it as he knew that he breathed. And that woman he had so leisurely watched as she disappeared from sight was, must have been, she. He sprang from the car with a jump. His first impulse to dash after her and checked himself, laughing a little bitterly. It was too late for that now. He had already let his chance slip through his fingers. Around the corner was Sixth Avenue, surface cars, the elevated, taxicabs, a multitude of people, and any one of 100 ways in which she could and would already have discontinued pursuit from him. And besides, he would not even have been able to recognize her if he saw her. Jimmy Dale's smile was mirthless as he turned back to the car and picked up the glove. Why had she dropped it there? It could not have been intentional. Why had? He began to tear suddenly at the glove's little finger. And in another second, kneeling on the car's step, his shoulders inside, he was holding a ring close under the little electric bulb. It was a gold seal ring, a small dainty thing that bore a crest, a bell surmounted by a bishop's meat, the bell quaint in design, harking the imagination back to some old-time belfry tower, and underneath, in the scroll, a motto. It was a full minute before Jimmy Dale could decipher it, for the lettering was minute, and the words, of course, reversed. It was in French. Sonnier le toxin. He straightened up, the glove and ring in his hand, a puzzle expression on his face. It was strange. Had she, after all, dropped the glove there intentionally, had she at last let down the barriers just a little between them, and given him this little intimate sign that she, and then Jimmy Dale laughed abruptly, self-mockingly. He was only trying to deceive himself, to argue himself into believing, but with heart and soul he wanted to believe. It was not like her. And neither was it so. His eyes had fixed on the seat beside the wheel. He had not used the lap rug all that day. He couldn't use rug and drive. He had left it folded and hanging on the rack in the tunnel. It was now neatly folded and reposing on the front seat. Yes, said Jimmy Dale, a sort of self-pity in his tones. I might have known. He lifted the rug beneath it, on the leather seat lay a white envelope, her letter. The letter that never came, say, with the plan of some grim, desperate work outlined ahead, the call to arms for the gray seal. Sonila Taksan. Ring the Taksan. Sound the alarm, the Taksan. The words were running through his brain, a strange mot on that crest that seemed so strangely apt, the Taksan. Never once in all the times that he had heard from her, never once in the years that had gone since that initial letter of hers had struck its first warning note, had any communication from her been but to sound again a new alarm, the Taksan. The Taksan. The words seemed to visualize her, to give her a concrete form and being, to breathe her very personality. The Taksan. Jimmy Dale whispered the word softly, a little wistfully. Yes, I shall call you that. The Taksan. He folded the glove very carefully, placed it with a ring in his pocketbook, picked up the letter and with a sharp exclamation turned it quickly over in his fingers, then bent hurriedly with it to the light. Strange things were happening that night. For the first time the letter was not even sealed. That was not like her either. What did it mean? Quick alert now. Anxious even. He pulled the double folded sheets from the envelope, glanced rapidly through them and after a moment a smile whimsical came slowly to a slips. It was quite plain now, all of it. The glove, the ring and the unsealed letter and the post script held the secret or rather what had been intended for a post script did. For it comprised only of a few words, ending abruptly unfinished. Look in the cupboard at the rear of the room. The man with the red wig is... That was all. And the words written in ink were badly blurred as though the paper had been hastily folded before the ink was dry. It was quite plain and in view of the real explanation of it all, eminently characteristic of her. With the letter already written she had come there, meaning to place it on the seat and cover it with a rug as indeed she had done, then deciding to add the post script and because she would attract less attention that way then in any other she had climbed into the car as though it belonged to her and had seated herself there to write it. She would have been hurried in her movements of course and in pulling off her glove to use the founding pen the ring had come with it. The rest was obvious. She'd just begun to write when he had appeared on the steps. She had slipped instantly down to the floor of the car probably dropping the glove from her lap, hastily enclosed the letter in the envelope which she had no time to seal, thrust the envelope under the rug and forgetting her glove and fearful of risking his attention by attempting to close the door firmly had stolen along the body of the car only to be noticed by him too late when she was well down the street and at that letter thought once more, Chagrin seized Jimmy Dale. Then he turned impulsively to the letter. All this was extraneous apart for another time when every moment was not a priceless asset as it very probably was now. Dear philanthropic crook, it always began that way, never any other way. He read on more and more intently, crouched there close to the light on the floor of his car, lips thinning as he proceeded, ready to the end, absorbing, memorizing it and then the abortive post script. Look in the cupboard at the rear of the room. The man with the red wig is, for an instant as mechanically he tore the letter into little shreds. He held their hesitant and the next slamming the door tight. He flung himself into the seat behind the wheel and the big 60 horsepower self-starting machine was roaring down the street. The toxin. There was a grim smile on Jimmy Dale's lips now. The alarm. Yes, it was always an alarm. Quick, sudden and emergency to face on the instant. Plans, decisions to be made with no time to ponder them with only that one fact to consider, staggering enough in itself that a mistake meant disaster and ruin to someone else and to himself if the courts were merciful where he had little hope for mercy, the penitentiary for life. And now, tonight again, as it almost always was when these mysterious letters came, every moment of inaction was piling up the odds against him and two, the same problem confronted him. How, in what way, in what role must he play the knight's game to its end? As Larry the bat, the car was speeding forward. He was heading down Broadway now, lower Broadway that stretched before him, deserted like some dark, narrow canyon where far below, like towering walls, the buildings close together and seemed to converge into some black, impassable barrier. The streetlights flashed by him. A patrolman stopped the swinging of his night stick and turned to gaze at the car that rushed by at a rate perilliously near to contempt of speed laws. Streetcars passed it in different intervals. Pedestrians were few and far between. It was the lower Broadway of night. Larry the bat, Timidale shook his head impatiently over the steering wheel. No, that would not do. It would be well enough for this young Burton, perhaps, but not for old Isaac, the east side fence. For Isaac knew him in the character of Larry the bat. His quick, keen brain, weaving, eliminating, devising, scheming, discarded that idea. The final coup of the night, as yet but sensed in an indefinite, unshaped way, if enacted in the person of Larry the bat, would therefore stamp Larry the bat and the gray seal as one. A contretemps, but little less fatal, in view of old Isaac, then to bracket the gray seal and Timidale. Larry the bat was not a character to be assumed with impunity, nor one to jeopardize. It was a bulwark of safety, as it were, to which more than once he owed escape from capture and discovery. He lifted his shoulders with a sudden jerk of decision as the car swerved to the left and headed for the east side. There was only one alternative then, the black silk mask that folded into such tiny compass and that, together with an automatic and the curious thin metal case that looked so like a cigarette case was always in his pocket for an emergency. The car turned again and approaching its destination, Timidale slowed down the speed perceptibly. It was a strange case, not a pleasant one, and the raw edges where they showed were ugly in their nakedness. Old Isaac Pelina, John Burton and Madden K. Wilmington, Madden, the wallpaper magnet, cures that of the three he should already know to, Old Isaac and Madden. Everybody in the east side, every denizen of the underworld and many who post on a far higher plain New Old Isaac, fenced to the most select clientele of thieves in New York, unscrupulous, handing love with any rascality or crime that promised profit, a money lender, a Shiloh, without even a Shiloh's humanity as a saving grace. Yes, as Larry the Batty knew Old Isaac and he knew him not only personally, but by first hand, reputation. He had heard the man cursed in blasphemous, whole sold abandoned by more than one crook who was in the old Fence's Toils. They dealt with him, the crooks, while they swore to get him because he was safe. But Timidale's lips parted in a mirthless smile. Someday Old Isaac would be found in that spider's den of his back of the dingy loan office with a knife in his heart or a bullet through his head. And Kay Wilmington Madden, Timidale's smiger whimsical, he had known Madden quite intimately for years, had even died with him at the St. James Club only a few nights before. Madden was a man in his own set and Madden, interfered with, was likely to prove none too tractable a customer to handle. And John Burton, the letter said, was Madden's private and confidential secretary. Timidale's lips thinned again. Well, Burton's acquaintance was still to be made. It was a curious trio and it was dirty work, more raw than cunning, more devilish than ingenious, blackmailing its most hellish form, the stake at the least calculation, a cool half million, a heavy price for a single slip in a man's life. He brought the car abruptly to a halt at the edge of the curb and sprang out to the ground. He was in the front of the Budapest restaurant, most popular of all resorts for the moment on the east side, by Fifth Avenue in the fond belief that it was seeing the real thing in seem alive, engaged its table a week in advance. Timidale pushed a bill into the door and hands hand accompanied by an injunction to keep an eye on the machine and enter the cafe. End of Part 1, Chapter 7A. The Thief from The Adventures of Timidale by Frank L. Packard, read by Lars Rolander. Part 1, Chapter 7B, of The Adventures of Timidale. This is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Adventures of Timidale by Frank L. Packard, reading by Lars Rolander. Part 1, The Man in the Case. Chapter 7B, The Thief, continued. But for a sort of tinseled ostination, the place might well have been the Marliance that he had just left. It was crowded and riot was at its height. A stringed orchestra in the Hungarian costume played what purported to be Hungarian heirs. Shouts, laughter, clatter of dishes, and thump of stains added to the din. He made his way between the closed-packed tables to the stairs and descended to the lower floor. Here, if anything, the confusion was greater than above. But here, too, was an exit through to the rear street and a moment later he was sauntering past the front of an unkept little pawn shop, closed for the night. Over her store, in the murk of a distant street lamp, three balls hang in sagging disarray, tawny with age. And across those dirty, unwashed windows, letters missing ran this legend. Is, Ack, Pelina, Pawn, Broc, Err. The pawn shop made the corner of a very dark narrow lane, and with a quick glance round him to assure himself that he was unobserved, Jimmy Dale stepped into the alleyway and, lost instantly in the blacker shadows, stole along by the wall of the pawn shop. Old Isaac's business was not all done through the front door. And then, suddenly, Jimmy Dale shrank still, closer against the wall. Was it intuition, premonition, or reality? There seemed an uncanny feeling of presence around him, as though perhaps he were watched, as though others beside himself were in the lane. Yes, ahead of him, a shadow moved. He could just barely distinguish it now that his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. It, like himself, was close against the wall and now it slunk noiselessly down the length of the lane until he lost sight of it. And what was that? He strained his ears to listen. It seemed like a window being opened or closed, cautiously, stealthily, the fraction of an inch at a time. And then he located the sound. It came from the other side of the lane and very nearly opposite to where on the second floor, a dull yellow glow shown out from old Isaac's private den in the rear of the pawnshop's office. Jimmy Dale's brows were gathered in sharp furrows. There was evidently something afoot tonight, of which the toxin had not sounded the alarm. And then the frown relaxed and he smiled a little. Miraculous as was the means through which she obtained the knowledge that was the basis of their strange partnership. It was no more a miraculous than her unerring accuracy in the minutest details. The toxin had never failed him yet. It was possible that something was afoot around him, quite probable indeed, since he was in the most vicious part of the city in the heart of Gangland. But whatever it might be, it was certainly extraneous to the mission or she would have mentioned it. The lane was empty now. He was quite sure of that and there was no further sound from the window opposite. He started forward once more, only to halt again for the second time as abruptly as before, squeezing if possible even more closely against the wall. Someone had turned into the lane from the sidewalk and walking hurriedly, choosing with evident precaution the exact center of the alleyway came toward him. The man passed. His heart stride a half run and a few feet beyond halted at old Isaac's side door. From somewhere inside the old building, Jimmy Dale's ears caught the faint ringing of an electric bell. A long ring followed in quick succession by three short ones. Then the repeated clicking of a latch as though pulled by a cord from above and the man passed in through the door, closing it behind him. Jimmy Dale nodded to himself in the darkness. It was a spring lock. The signal was one long ring and three short ones. The tuxedo had not missed even those small details. Also, Burton was late for his appointment for that must have been Burton. Business such as old Isaac had in hand that night would have permitted the entrance of no other visitor but Kay Wilmington Madden's private secretary. He moved down the lane to the door and tried it softly. It was locked, of course. The slim, tapering sensitive fingers whose tips were eyes and ears to Jimmy Dale felt over the lock and a slender little steel instrument slipped into the keyhole. A moment more and the catch was released and the door under his hand began to open. With it a jar he paused, his eyes searching intently up and down the lane. There was nothing, no sign of anyone, no moving shadows now. His gaze shifted to the window opposite, directly facing it now with a dull reflection upon it from the lighted window of old Isaac's den above his head. He could make out that it was open, but that was all. Once more he smiled a little tolerantly at himself this time. Someone had been in the lane. Someone had opened the window of his or her room in that tenement house across from him. Surely there was nothing surprising, unnatural, or even out of the commonplace in that. He had been a little bit on edge himself, perhaps, and the sudden movement of that shadow, unexpected, had startled him for the moment, as in all probability the opening of the window had startled the skulking figure itself into action. The door was open now. He stepped noiselessly inside and closed it noiselessly behind him. He was in a narrow hall, where a few yards away, a light shone down the stairway at right angle to the hall itself. Rear door or pawn shop opens into hall and exactly opposite very short flight of stairs, leading directly to doorway of Isaac's den above. Ramshackle old place, low ceilings. Isaac, when sitting in his den, can look down and, by means of a transom of the rear door of the shop, see the customers as they enter from the street, while he also keeps an eye on his assistant. Later always locks up and leaves promptly at six o'clock. Jimmy Dale was subconsciously repeating to himself snatches from the toxins letter, which, as subconsciously in reading, he had memorized almost word for word. And now, voices reached him, one excited, nervous, as though the speaker were laboring under mental strain that bordered closely on the hysterical. The other, curiously mingling querulousness with an attempt to pacify, but dominantly contemptuous, staring, cold. Jimmy Dale moved along the hall very slowly, without a sound, testing each step before he threw his body weight from one leg to the other. He reached the foot of the stairs. The toxin had been right. It was a very short flight. He counted the steps. There were eight. Above facing him, a door was open. The voices were louder now. It was a sordid-looking room, what he could see of it, power to stricken in its appearance, intentionally so probably for effect, with no attempt whatever at furnishing. He could see through the doorway to the window that opened on the alleyway, or rather just glimpse the top of the window at an angle across the room, that and a bare street of floor. The two men were not in the line of vision. Burton's voice, it was unquestionably Burton speaking, came to Jimmy Dale now distinctly. No, I didn't, I tell you, I didn't, I hadn't the nerve. Jimmy Dale slipped his black silk mask over his face, and with extreme caution, on hands and knees, began to climb the stairs. So it was old Isaac now, in a half-par, half-sneer, and I was so sure, my young friend, that you had. I was so sure that you were not such a fool. Yes, I could even have sworn that they were in your pocket now, what? It is too bad, too bad. It is not a pleasant thing to think of. That little chair up the river in its horrible little room where, for God's sake Isaac, not that, do you hear? Not that, my God, I didn't mean to. I didn't know what I was doing. Jimmy Dale crept up another step, another and another. There was silence for a moment in the room. Then Burton again, horse-voiced. Isaac, I'll make good to you some other way. I swear, I will, I swear it. If I'm caught at this, I'll get 15 years for it. And which would you rather have? Jimmy Dale could picture the oily smirk, the shrug of his shoulders, the outthrust hands, palms upwards, elbows in at the hips, the fingers curled and wide apart. 15 years, or what you get for murder? Eh, my friend, you have thought of that, eh? It is a very little price, I ask, yes? Damned you! Burton's voice was shrill, then dropped to half sob. No, no Isaac, I didn't mean that. Only for God's sake be merciful. It is not only the risk of the penitentiary. It's more than that. I tried to play white all my life. And until that cursed night, there's no man living could say I haven't. You know that, you know that, Isaac. I tell you, I couldn't do it this afternoon. I tell you, I couldn't. I tried to and I couldn't. Jimmy Dale was lying flat on the little landing now, peering into the room, back a short distance from the doorway, a repulsive looking little man in unkempt clothes and soyed linen, with yellowish skinned, parchment face, out of which small black eyes, shown cunningly and shrewdly, sat at a bare-deal table in a ricketed chair. Facing him across the table, stood a young man of no more than 25, clean-cut, well-dressed, but whose face was unnaturally white now, and whose hand, as he extended it in a pleading gesture toward the other, trembled visibly. Jimmy Dale's hand made his way quietly to side pocket and extracted his automatic. Hold Isaac hummed his shoulders and leered at his visitor. We talk a great deal, my young friend. What is the use? A bargain is a bargain. A few rubies in exchange for your life. A few rubies and my mouth is shut otherwise. He hummed his shoulders again. Well? Burton drew back, swept his hand in a dazed way across his eyes, and laughed out suddenly in bitter mirth. A few rubies, he cried, the most magnificent stones of the side of the water. A few rubies. It's been Madden's life hobby. Every child in New York knows that. A few. Yes, there's only a few, but those few are worth a fortune. He trusts me. The man has been like a father to me and... So, you are the very last to be suspected, observed old Isaac suavely. Have I not told you that? There is nothing to fear. Did we not arrange everything so nicely, eh, my young friend? See, it was to-night that Madden gives a little reception to his friends. And did you not say that the rubies would be taken from the safe-deposit vault this afternoon, since his friends always clamor to see them as a very fitting conclusion to an evening's entertainment? And did you not say that you very naturally had access to the safe in the library where you worked, and that he would not notice they were gone until he came to look for them sometime this evening? I think you said all that. And what suspicion, let alone proof, would attach itself to you? You were out of the room once when he, too, was absent for perhaps half an hour? It is very simple. In that half hour, someone somehow abstracted them. Certainly it was not you. You see how little I ask, and I pay well, do I not? And so I gave you until to-night. Three days have gone, and I have said nothing, and the body has not been found, eh, but to-night, eh, it was understood. The rubies are the chair. Burton's lips moved, but it was a moment before he could speak. You wouldn't dare, he whispered thickly. You wouldn't dare! I tell the story of what you tried to make me do, and they send you up for it. Old eyes are struck with pity and contempt. Is it after all a fool I'm dealing with? He sneered. And I, what should I say? That you had stolen the stones from your employer and offered them as a bribe to silence me, and that I had refused? The very act of handing you over to the police would prove the truth of what I said and drop you up even a chance of leniency. For that other thing? Is it not so, eh? And why did I not hander you over at once three nights ago? Believe me, my young friend, I should have a very good reason ready. A dozen, if necessary, if it came to that. But we are borrowing trouble, are we not? We shall not come to that, eh? For a moment it seemed to Yimmy Dale, as he watched that Burton would hurl himself upon the other, white to the lips, the muscles of his face twitching. Burton clenched his fists and leaned over the table. And then, with sudden revulsion of emotion, he drew back once more, and once more came that choked sob. You'll pay for this, Isaac. Your turn will come for this. I have been threatened very often, snapped the other contemptuously. Bah! What are threats? I laugh at them, as I always will. Then with a quick change of front, his voice a sudden snarl. Well, we have talked enough. You have your choice, the stones are a, and it is to-night, now. The old pawnbroker sprawled back in his chair, a cunning leer on his vicious face, a gleam of triumph, greed in the beady rat-like eyes that never wavered from the other. Burton, moisture oozing from his forehead, stood there, hesitant, staring back at old Isaac, half in a fascinated gaze, half as though trying to read some sign of weakness in the bestial countenance that confronted him. And then, very slowly, in an automatic, machine-like way, his hand grouped into the inside pocket of his vest, and old Isaac cackled out his derision. So you thought you could bluff me, eh? You thought you could fool old Isaac? Bah! I read you like a book. Did I not tell you a while back that you had them in your pocket? I know your kind, my young friend. I know your kind very well indeed. It is my business. You would not have dared to come here to-night without the price. So you took them this afternoon as we agreed. Yes, yes, you did well. You will not regret it. And now let me see them. His voice rose eagerly. Let me see them now, my young friend. Yes, I took them, Burton spoke listlessly. God help me! Old Isaac, fevering, excited like a different creature now, sprang from his chair, and as Burton drew a long, flat leather case from his pocket, snatched it from the other's hand. His fingers in their rapacious haste could not at first manipulate the catch, and then finally, with the case open, he bent over the table feverishly. The light reflected back as from some living mass of crimson fire, now shading darkly, now glowing into wondrous, colorful transparency as he moved the case to and fro with jerky motions of his hands, and he was babbling, crooning to himself like one possessed. Ah, the little beauties. Ah, the pretty little things. Yes, yes, these are the ones. This is the great Arakon, see, see, the six-sided prism, terminated by the six-sided pyramid, but it must be cut, it must be cut to sell it, eh? Ah, it's too bad, too bad. And this, this one here, I know them all, this is. But his sentence was never finished. It was Jimmy Dale on his feet now, leaning against the jamb of the door, his automatic covering the two men at the table who spoke. Quite so, Isaac, he said coolly, you know them all, quite so, Isaac, but be good enough to drop them. The case fell from Isaac's hand, the flush on his cheeks died to a sickly pallor, and his mouth half open, he stood like a man turned to stone. His hands with curd fingers still outstretched of the table, over the crimson gems that spilled from the case, lay scattered now on the tabletop. Burton neither spoke nor moved. A little whiter, the misery in his face almost apathetic. He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. Jimmy Dale walked across the room, halted at the end of the table, and surveyed the two men grimly. And then, while one hand with the revolver extended, rested easily on the table, the other gathered up the stones, placed them in the case, and the case in his pocket. Jimmy Dale slips parted in an uninviting smile. I guess I'm in luck tonight, eh, Isaac? He drawled, between you and your young friend as I believe you call him. It would appear as though I had fallen on my feet. That Arakon's worth, what would you say, a hundred, two hundred thousand alone, eh? A very famous stone that, had your eye on it for quite a time, Isaac, you miserable, blood-leach, eh? Isaac did not answer. But while he still held back from the table, he seemed to be regaining a little of his composure. Burglars or whatever sort were no novelty to him, and were staring fixedly at Jimmy Dale. Can't place me, though there's not many in the profession you don't know? Is that it? Inquired Jimmy Dale softly. Well, don't try, Isaac. It's hardly worth your while. I've got the stones now, and wait, wait, listen. It was Burton speaking for the first time, his words coming in quick nervous rush. Listen, you don't. Hold your tongue, cried old Isaac, with sudden fierceness. You are a fool! He leaned toward Jimmy Dale, a crafty smile on his face, quite in control of himself once more. Don't listen to him, listen to me. You're right, I can't place you, and it doesn't make any difference. He took a step forward. But... Not to close, Isaac, snapped Jimmy Dale sharply. I know you. So? He accoladed old Isaac, rubbing his hands together. So, that is good. That is what I want. Listen, we will make a bargain. We are birds of a feather, eh? All thieves, eh? You've got the drop on us, who did all the work. But you'll give us our share, eh? Listen, you couldn't get rid of those stones alone. You know that. You're not so green at the game, eh? You'd have to go to someone. You know me. You know old Isaac, you say? Oh, well then, you know there isn't another man in New York who dispose of those rubies and play safe doing it, except me. I'll make a good bargain with you. Isaac, said Jimmy Dale pensively, you've made a good many good bargains. I wonder when you'll make your last. There's more than one looking for interest on those bargains in a pretty grim sort of way. Bwah! Yaculated old Isaac. It is an old story. They are all alike. I'm afraid of none of them. I hold them all like that. His hands opened and closed like a taloned claw. And you'd add me to the latte, said Jimmy Dale. He lifted the revolver, its muscle on old Isaac, examined the mechanism thoughtfully, and lowered it again. Very well, I'll make a bargain with you, providing it is agreeable to your young friend here. Ah, exclaimed old Isaac shrily. So that is good. It's done then. He chuckled hoarsely. Any bargain I make, he will agree to. Is it not so? He fixed his eyes on Burton. Well, is it not so? Speak up, say. He stopped. The words cut short off on his lips. He came without warning, a crash, a pound on the door below. Another Burton shrank back against the wall. My God! The police, he gasped. Madden found out we're caught. Jimmy Dale's eyes on old Isaac narrowed. The pounding in the alleyway grew louder, more insistent. And then his first suspicion passed. It was no game of Isaac's. Crafty though the old Fox was, the other's surprise and agitation was too genuine to be questioned. Still the pounding continued. Someone was kicking viciously at the door, and banging at a two on the panels with his fists. Old Isaac's claw-like hands doubled suddenly. Ah, it is some drunken shot, he snarled out. That knows no better than to come here and roast the whole neighborhood. It is true, in a moment we will have the police running in from the street. But wait, wait, I'll teach the fool a lesson. He dashed around the table, ran for the window, rinsed the catch-up, flung the window open, and snarling again, leaned out. And instantly the knocking ceased. And instantly, then, with a sharp cry, as the whole ghastly meaning of it swept upon him, Jimmy sprang after the other, too late. Came the roar of a revolver shot, a stream of flame cutting the darkness of the alleyway from the window in the house opposite. And, without a sound, old Isaac crumpled up, hung limply for a moment over the sill, and slid in a heap to the floor. End of part one, chapter seven B. The Man in the Case from The Adventures of Jimmy Dale by Frank L. Packard. Read by Lars Rolander.